Breakthrough Series practices at Birmingham, Alabama’s Rickwood Field
A Breakthrough Series player takes some cuts in the batting cage at Rickwood Field. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr. / Alabama News Center)
Jerry Manuel sat in the visitors’ dugout at Rickwood Field, taking a break from putting young men through their paces in the batting cage.
The 70-year-old is a former Major League Baseball player who went on to manage the Chicago White Sox and the New York Mets. But why is the 2000 American League Manager of the Year still giving young men tips on the fine art of hitting a baseball?
“Because I have a gift of teaching,” Manuel said. “I believe my gift is to bring (along) the young Black player, give him everything that I learned, to make the game better as a whole, not just for the Blacks but just as a whole, for the game. That’s my calling.”
A week after buses delivered fans to Rickwood Field for the Major League Baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, Manuel and a pair of former Atlanta Braves arrived on a bus with about 25 young men. The aim was to give this group of Black ballplayers a chance to break through into big-time baseball.
The Breakthrough Series is a joint effort on behalf of USA Baseball and Major League Baseball. Established in 2008, the program focuses on developing the player on and off the field through seminars, mentorship, gameplay, scout evaluations, video coverage and the highest level of instruction, all while providing a platform for the players to perform for scouts and collegiate coaches.
Manuel and former Atlanta Braves Marquis Grissom and Marvin Freeman thrilled the young players with a history lesson about the hallowed diamond they visited.
A morning rain kept the players from venturing onto the grass at Rickwood Field, but players worked in the batting cage in the Willie Mays Pavilion at Rickwood. The area named for the baseball legend who died June 18 reminded Grissom of a road trip as a rookie when his Montreal Expos went to San Francisco.
The outfielder was shocked to be told that Mays wanted to visit with him.
“As I was shaking his hand, he said, ‘Make a fist,’” Grissom recalled. “I made a fist. He said, ‘You gotta get you some hand strength. You ain’t got no hand strength.’”
Fast forward to the end of his career and Grissom frequently visited with his idol.
“My last three years I signed with the San Francisco Giants – a three-year deal – and I had an opportunity to be with Willie Mays every single day in spring training and every home game for the last three years of my career,” he said. “I built that relationship with him where I felt like the last 25 years, I could pick up the phone and call him any time and he would answer or call me right back.”
Grissom and Freeman had each started his own program working with Black youth and have since become involved with the Breakthrough Series, which was formerly known as Elite Development Invitational.
“I partnered with and got involved with the Breakthrough and EDI for the good reason of giving my kids an opportunity to get on that showcase, where they can go out and showcase and display their talent at another level, with most of the elite kids in the country,” Grissom said. “EDI and Breakthrough provide an opportunity for our kids, my kids, in my organization, to be a part of.”
Freeman said the seeds planted in the Breakthrough Series have already yielded results.
“Michael Harris (of the Atlanta Braves) was in this program,” Freeman said. “He was Rookie of the Year (in 2022). Year before last, we had six guys go in the first round. The fruits have been realized. We’re just trying to continue to add to it.”
The former Major League pitcher said there are seven Black pitchers with whom he has worked who are now pitching in pro baseball. That’s significant, he said, since there are only about 56 Black players altogether.
“To say that I have three guys in the major leagues that I’ve worked with since they were 16, 17 years old is really inspiring,” Freeman said. “The things that we’re teaching them, they’re carrying these things on and they’re having success and then they’re able to give some of these things back to the younger kids.
“I always say if you see it, you can be it,” the former pitcher continued. “When I was coming up as a young man, I saw guys like Bob Gibson and Ferguson Jenkins and guys like that. That inspired me and gave me hope that I could play in the majors someday. Hopefully, we’ll get more guys out there that look like us and make these younger guys realize that they have a chance, too.”
Gerald Watkins, chairman of the Friends of Rickwood, said after the morning shower that the quality of the field must be maintained and protected. “There will be travel ball played in the month of July. August is mostly a down month, kind of repair and replenish (the field),” he said. “In September, we’ll play a little bit of travel ball. In October, we have a fantasy camp and home run derby and then we shut down for the winter.”
Watkins said the old ballpark is more alive since the recent Major League Baseball game.
“More than it has been in 100 years,” he said.
